Articles and Resources

QUOTE: The distinction between inpatient and outpatient status matters: Seniors must have three consecutive days as admitted patients to qualify for Medicare coverage for follow-up nursing home care, and observation time doesn’t count for that three-day tally.

QUOTE: Even the idea that everyone gets urgent care when needed from emergency rooms is false. Yes, hospitals are required by law to treat people in dire need, whether or not they can pay. But that care isn’t free — on the contrary, if you go to an emergency room you will be billed, and the size of that bill can be shockingly high. Some people can’t or won’t pay, but fear of huge bills can deter the uninsured from visiting the emergency room even when they should. And sometimes they die as a result.

QUOTE: Elite universities such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford give aid to families earning as much as $200,000, which less-selective schools say puts pressure on them to also offer grants to higher-income families. Education experts say such subsidies mean less help for lower- and middle-income students, who fall deeper into debt to pay tuition.

QUOTE: The regulations issued Monday, which provide a fair amount of latitude to states, were welcomed by consumer groups, patient advocates and some business lobbyists. But they may not satisfy liberals who argue that the exchanges should tightly regulate insurance and contract with selected health plans that offer the best deals. And they may not satisfy conservatives...

QUOTE: Federal officials announced on Wednesday that they had reached a settlement with a group of homeowners who sued the federal government and the State of Louisiana alleging discrimination in the state’s Road Home program, which distributed grants to those whose houses were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent flooding.

QUOTE: The moral of my story is that understanding and effectively taking part in a debate requires awareness of the level at which we and our opponents are operating at any given point...Once we’ve pushed the debate on Medicare or any other policy matter to the point where convictions become the sole basis of disagreement, it is time to vote.

QUOTE: “But at these extremely low levels, especially for those companies quoted on the stock exchange, we have to be very wary,” he added. “If we go by today’s values, as a result of the recession and the crisis the country finds itself in, it will be really selling the crown jewels at a pittance of their cost.” Mr. Papandreou’s government has not managed to make a convincing case for the sell-off to many Greeks, where the idea of a fire sale has taken hold, setting off a wave of national indignation.

QUOTE: Veterans whose claims had already spent years in the VA system often wait several more years for the court to rule on whether they will receive disability payments and free health care. Some have abandoned their appeals. Others, including soldiers from as far back as World War II, have died before a decision was issued.

QUOTE: Asking a population that’s increasingly brown and beige to accept punishing tax rates while white seniors receive roughly $3 in Medicare benefits for every dollar they paid in (the projected ratio in the 2030s) promises to polarize the country along racial as well as generational lines.

QUOTE: Now, a class-action lawsuit... says that five of the eight Queens judges are not just difficult, but also biased against the applicants — many of whom are poor or immigrants — and have systematically denied benefits to the disabled by making legal and factual errors.

QUOTE: When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1.

QUOTE: Much like the Great Depression, when millions of previously working people came to rely on a new social safety net for their sustenance, a swelling group of formerly middle-class Americans like Mr. Moore, 30, is seeking government aid for the first time. Without help, say economists, many are at risk of slipping permanently into poverty, even as economic conditions improve.

QUOTE: The angry comments flooded in after the federal government announced it was expanding its program to assist unemployed homeowners, as well as borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are now worth.

QUOTE: [over the past three decades] government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor. Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction.

QUOTE: Instead of heeding the frightening messages emanating from self-styled “protectors” of Medicare, such as Ms. [Betsy] McCaughey, the elderly might search their souls on the moral platform for the political economy of sharing in a civilized society.

QUOTE: Work isn't the only middle-class virtue that is getting punished. The system penalizes savings, too--not just through taxes, but also through programs that reward debtors, the profligate and college families that show up at the financial aid office with empty pockets. Yet another series of tax and benefit rules penalizes marriage.

QUOTE: Republicans in general charge that since none of the [healthcare] bills contain enforcement mechanisms to check that recipients of government subsidies are legal, illegal immigrants would be able to sneak into the system and get US cash [for healthcare subsidies] anyway.

QUOTE: rising joblessness is overwhelming claims offices...the District and many states, including Maryland and Virginia, are failing to meet federal guidelines that require timely processing of unemployment claims, appeals and benefit payments

QUOTE: When the elderly exhaust their assets, individually or as a couple, the government steps in and pays for their long-term care. Adult children are not part of the Medicaid eligibility equation. But Medicaid is in big trouble — cutting here, squeezing there — and will be inundated when baby boomers reach old age. The staggering cost of long-term care and the explosion in the number of people who will need it has prompted a second look at filial responsibility laws as a way to deal with the impending crisis.

QUOTE: After being dealt a rare public embarrassment by the City Council, which forced his administration to acknowledge on Monday that he was legally required to send out $400 rebate checks promised to hundreds of thousands of New York homeowners, a defiant Mr. Bloomberg said on Wednesday that he had no plans to release the money.

QUOTE: Farmers’ markets accept food stamps. The Harlem Fairway accepts food stamps. So does Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn. Even Whole Foods, which has been trying to shake that “Whole Paycheck” image, accepts food stamps. But Costco, the warehouse retailer that made its reputation as the anti-Wal-Mart, generous not only to Costco’s customers but to its workers as well, does not.

QUOTE: the haphazard way in which the American health care system handles cases involving uninsured immigrants who are gravely injured or seriously ill. Whether these patients receive sustained care in this country or are privately deported by a hospital depends on what emergency room they initially visit.

QUOTE: Under the mortgage relief programs, some people will get reduced interest rates, either temporarily or permanently. Others will have a portion of their home debt wiped away. Some will get a combination of reduced rate and loan forgiveness. Still others will wind up disappointed.

ABSTRACT: More than 60 percent of Montgomery County police officers who retired in the past four years are collecting disability payments, including one who was a top finisher in a fitness contest a year after retiring on disability....Inspector General Thomas J. Dagley cited "questionable practices" and patterns or behaviors that a "prudent person would consider abusive."

QUOTE: With the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan far from over, President Bush is threatening to veto a bill that would pay tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who has served in the military for at least three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. A main reason is the fear that it would hasten an exodus from the ranks.

QUOTE: pitting the multibillion-dollar industry that supplies oxygen to medical patients against a large number of lawmakers and Medicare, which said it was being charged many times more for oxygen equipment rentals than the actual cost.

QUOTE: Many Section 8 tenants are low-income residents, and supporters of the bill argued that landlords were frequently turning away voucher holders to keep poor tenants out and were thus cutting off a much-needed form of housing for them.

QUOTE: The government’s widely publicized plan to run free buses from Damascus, Syria, to Baghdad was suspended after just two runs. Thousands of Sunni refugees get no aid because they fear registering with the Shiite-led government. While aid organizations are distributing emergency packets that include utensils, blankets and food, deeper structural issues, like securing neighborhoods, supplying housing and creating jobs, remain unresolved and largely unaddressed.

QUOTE: More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is suffering from an acute shortage of housing that has nearly doubled the cost of rental units in the city, threatening the recovery of the region and the well-being of many residents who decided to return against the odds.

QUOTE: these Norwegian towns are links in a chain of misery....duped by Terra’s brokers, who did not warn them that these types of securities were risky and subject to being cashed out, at a loss, if their market price fell below a certain level.

QUOTE: Foreign-born New Yorkers are better educated, more likely to have health insurance and less likely to have entered the country illegally compared with immigrants in the rest of the country, according to a new analysis.

QUOTE: Over the last eight years, the refusal of patients to die according to actuarial schedules has led the federal government to demand that hospices exceeding reimbursement limits repay hundreds of millions of dollars to Medicare.

QUOTE: The preoccupation right now is soaring fuel prices: cheaper natural gas is unavailable in this region, and wood heat is often impractical or insufficient. But because of limited federal money, average fuel assistance for the 46,000 low-income Maine families expected to apply will probably decline to $579 this year, from $688 last year, said Jo-Ann Choate of the Maine State Housing Agency.

QUOTE: Low-income children who fare the worst in health care, education and family structure live in some of the nation's wealthiest states, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, a study to be released next week reveals.

QUOTE: Is it time for a new GI Bill? Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan face so many other difficulties, it's hard to imagine the government's making their college subsidy a priority. Huge numbers suffer from brain injuries and emotional trauma and aren't getting enough care...Even some advocates of better vet care question if the government has the same moral obligation to volunteers in today's military as it did to draftees six decades ago.

QUOTE: His story is one example of how medical advances in the battlefield have outpaced the home front. Many wounded veterans return home feeling that the VA system, specifically its 62-year-old disability ratings system, has failed them.

QUOTE: Like the other Gulf Coast states battered by Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi was required by Congress to spend half of its billions in federal grant money to help low-income citizens trying to recover from the storm. But so far, the state has spent $1.7 billion in federal money on programs that have mostly benefited relatively affluent residents and big businesses

QUOTE: Congressional Democrats had attached legislation funding veterans programs to a $150.7 billion bill that also funded a number of domestic priorities, including health, labor and education. Democrats also added $3.7 billion to what the president budgeted for veterans programs.

QUOTE: The issue has shifted since concerns about illegal immigrants triggered angry calls for border fences and deportation two years ago. Now, voter anger appears to revolve around the belief that illegal immigrants are unfairly consuming government benefits, a fear that stems more from economic uncertainty than culture clashes, Democratic and Republican pollsters say.

QUOTE: Beginning tomorrow night, the city will stop giving emergency shelter to families who are reapplying for a place to stay after being ruled ineligible....defended by officials as a necessary tightening of a munificent policy that was being repeatedly abused by a few families.

QUOTE: That survey, by the U.S. Census Bureau, shows that thousands of people who fled the hurricane two years ago landed in dismal economic straits, often facing meager paychecks or unemployment after the storm scattered them across the USA. It found nearly a third of those who fled the hurricane could not find jobs last year, and thousands more weren't trying.

QUOTE: An additional 22,110 poor children had not received dental care in at least two years, according to a review of dental records requested from United Healthcare, a managed-care organization serving Maryland Medicaid beneficiaries. The congressional subcommittee requested billing and service records from United as part of an investigation into gaps in Medicaid care for poor children.

QUOTE: Seven other states, including Maryland, promised to do the same if President Bush vetoes legislation that would renew and extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The program, known as SCHIP, targets children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy insurance.

QUOTE: A congressional inquest that began in May with lawmakers angrily interrogating federal health officials and insurance executives continues to probe failings in the system. This month, members of Congress will push ahead with a bill that would strengthen dental care for the children of the working poor.

QUOTE: The delays have affected the poor the most — those dependent on government assistance to rebuild their lives. While middle- and upper-class neighborhoods have rebuilt using private insurance and contacts, residents of low-income areas such as the Lower 9th Ward and Holy Cross — roughly 20,000 of them — for the most part remain scattered throughout the region, their return uncertain.

QUOTE: Gov. Eliot Spitzer said Monday that New York would consider suing federal health officials if the state was not granted a waiver to expand its federally subsidized health insurance program for children.

QUOTE: But the Bush administration and Congressional Democrats are ideologically divided about what Washington should do. Administration officials are reluctant to bail out people who bought homes they could not afford or simply gambled that easy credit and rising real estate prices would lead to quick profits.